A Rainbow Photo Album

Hello there :)
I have something a bit different today... it's a homemade photo album, something I've had in my mind to try for a while and when Tara added the Echo Park products to the store recently I knew the Camera die would be perfect to decorate the front cover :)

This post contains quite a few photos as I try to explain how I made it... it's certainly not a new idea and it's quite a simple design so hopefully I made it easy to follow!!!

First of all are the pages, I went with 14 pages in rainbow colours of medium-weight cardstock and they measure 10½ x 15cm. Fourteen is a good number because the zig zag binding edge can then be made from a strip of thin card thats 30cm in length (scrapbook cardstock) and just short of 10½ cm wide....

I used a score board to score the black strip at 1cm intervals and then a bone folder to help press the creases as I "concertina" folded it. I applied double sided tape to everyother fold on one side of the black card and flipped it over to do the same on the other side.

As you can see from the bottom two photos above, I have basically stuck all the valley folds together on the outside of the album spine which gives you 14 tabs on the inside of the spine to attach your colored pages to. I found the easiest way to do this step is to start at the back, remembering to leave a strip to attach to your back cover, and alternate between adhereing the valley folds and pages, definitely not as fiddly that way!!

Hopefully you can see what I mean in the bottom right photo which is a close up of the finished book spine before the front and back cover were added. The pages do spring round to make a carousel of colour which is quite pretty too :)

Onto the covers... I used thick cardboard, I hoard pieces from packaging and the backs of paper pads, it's perfect for these types of projects :) I covered them with thin white ribbed card.. ahhh just like those days of covering school exercise books ;)

Then its time to adhere the front and back covers to your album pages and this is what you should end up with..

To neaten the covers, I stuck a rectangle of card to the inside which covered the bare cardboard and black strip too.... et Voila... your album is ready for decoration :)

I die cut the camera and made it quite colourful to match the rainbow pages and used a speech bubble from Lawn fawn and Mama Elephants Smile sentiment too. I had a Bam bubble die cut lying on my desk so after cutting a rectangle into it, I placed it over the flash window on the camera... now there's some action going on :)

Well I hope that made sense and you give it a try... they make great gifts and can be left blank for the recipient to fill or you could go to town and fill the pages with photos instead :)

      

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Photo-bombing a Photo bomb!

I know I promised a video showing all the different uses for our new foils, but we had so much new product in store on Thursday night that I have spent the whole weekend packing your orders so the video will have to wait as they do take a while to put together (especially when you're working out how to do them as you go!)

So for today I thought I'd show you an idea I had for the new Photo bomb stamp set from Mama Elephant.   This is a great stamp set and I can see it being used for so many different types of cards - the "from all of us" is a really useful sentiment too.  But my first make with it, I saw something that meant with a little effort you can take it one step further and photo bomb the photo bomb - let me show you what I saw....

Firstly I stamped the large image onto 300gsm cardstock - not brilliant for blending but I managed t get some OK colouring with copics.  I framed it with the polaroid fun die that has frames to fit all the images in this set and turns them into instant old style photos.

What I saw though was the little girl in the middle was kinda photo bombing her own shot and with a little effort I thought we could make her "pop" right out of the photo....

So I did a little selective inking - well actually I inked up the stamp as selectively as I could and then used a damp cotton but to wipe off all the ink below the girl I wanted to pick out.  I did this on the 300 gsm card again for strength for the pop out.  What you have then though is a little girl with two arms and one hand but its a very easy shape to draw the left hand freestyle with a copic liner and then use the pen to extend her dress too.  I coloured her and cut her out and left a long tab of card in the middle of the dress to be the mechanism to have her pop.   The little arrow that comes in the polaroid die helps point out what needs to be done.  To put it together you just need to carefully cut around the hairline of the 3 characters below her with a craft knife and then insert the tab through the slit you made making sure the extra hand is hidden behind the blond boys head.

For the sentiments I used the lovely new smile die from Mama Elephant and then for an extra surprise used the little "Hi!" from the stamp set on the girls dress making sure to stamp it low enough that it's hidden before she pops out.

NEWS FROM THE STORE:

•  We have received new releases and restocks from Mama Elephant and Altenew this week.  Quite a few of the Altenew items are already showing as out of stock - many of those were due to the fact that we didn't actually receive any!   Despite having our order in since late January, we have been having HUGE problems getting hold of everything we wanted so I finally gave up waiting and just grabbed what I could.  I will try again for the items we missed when I see they have them in stock themselves.
•  We have some restocks from Waffle Flower - including the very popular Pattern Play which has been out of stock since Jennifer McGuire featured it on her blog last month.  We also got their new release so as soon as it goes live in mid-April you can grab it here too :-)
• The latest release from Neat and Tangled will be in store on Monday.
• We will be getting the new release from Reverse Confetti in the next week or so.
• Paper Smooches latest release and massive die restocks will be here in early April.
• SugarPea Designs have also been having a few issues with their suppliers but I hope that they will finally ship their last release to us in a week or so.  We are hoping to iron out supply issues from their May release onwards so we can get it in store quicker for you!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend - see you next week!
Tara